Kannada people

The Kannada people, known as the Kannadigas and Kannadigaru, are the people who natively speak Kannada. Kannadigas are mainly found in the state of Karnataka in India and in the neighboring states of Kerala, Maharashtra particularly in Solapur, Goa, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Delhi states. The English plural is Kannadigas.

Early settlements

Settlement in Karnataka is found to be existent at least from the 2nd millennium BC as explored in Brahmagiri archaeological site near Chitradurga district, central Karnataka. Chandravalli exploration has revealed interaction of Roman and Chinese travelers around the 2nd and 3rd century BC.

Kannadigas have built powerful empires and kingdoms with Kannada as the official language. The language was once popular from Kaveri to Godavari as mentioned in the Kannada classic Kavirajamarga of 850 CE. Archaeological evidences show Kannada inscriptions found as far north as Madhya Pradesh (Inscription of Krishna III) and Bihar.The great Karnataka Expansion provides insights to kingdoms of northern India whose originators were from Kannada country.

Kannada

Kannada /ˈkɑːnədə, ˈkæ-/ (ಕನ್ನಡ kannaḍa, IPA: [ˈkʌnːəɖɑː]) or Canarese/Kanarese /kænəˈriːz/, is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Kannada people in South India, mainly in the state of Karnataka, and by linguistic minorities in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Kerala, and Goa. The language has roughly 40 million native speakers who are called Kannadigas (Kannaḍigaru), and a total of 50.8 million speakers according to a 2001 census. It is one of the scheduled languages of India and the official and administrative language of the state of Karnataka.

The Kannada language is written using the Kannada script, which evolved from the 5th-century Kadamba script. Kannada is attested epigraphically for about one and a half millennia, and literary Old Kannada flourished in the 6th-century Ganga dynasty and during the 9th-century Rashtrakuta Dynasty. Kannada has an unbroken literary history of over a thousand years.

Based on the recommendations of the Committee of Linguistic Experts, appointed by the Ministry of Culture, the Government of India designated Kannada a classical language of India. In July 2011, a center for the study of classical Kannada was established as part of the Central Institute of Indian Languages at Mysore to facilitate research related to the language.

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu (/ˈtæmɪl ˈnɑːduː/ TAM-il-NAH-doo;  Tamil pronunciation ; Tamil: தமிழ் நாடு; literally The Land of Tamils or Tamil Country) is one of the 29 states of India. Its capital and largest city is Chennai (formerly known as Madras). Tamil Nadu lies in the southernmost part of the Indian Peninsula and is bordered by the union territory of Puducherry and the South Indian states of Kerala, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh. It is bounded by the Eastern Ghats on the north, by the Nilgiri, the Anamalai Hills, and Kerala on the west, by the Bay of Bengal in the east, by the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait on the southeast, and by the Indian Ocean on the south. It also shares a maritime border with the nation of Sri Lanka.

Tamil Nadu is the eleventh largest state in India by area and the sixth most populous state in India. The state was ranked sixth among states in India according to the Human Development Index in 2011. Tamil Nadu is the second largest state economy in India with ₹4789 billion (US$70 billion) in gross domestic product. The state has the highest number (10.56 per cent) of business enterprises and stands second in total employment (9.97 per cent) in India, compared to the population share of about 6 per cent. Tamil Nadu was ranked as one of the seven top developed states in India based on a "Multidimensional Development Index" in a 2013 report published by a panel headed by current RBI governor Raghuram Rajan. Its official language is Tamil, which is one of the longest surviving classical languages in the world.